A Wild Tomboy Appeared!
by Quill of Molliemon
Summary: AU, crossover, one-shot. Takes place decades before "Shiny Demon". Young Minato thought that seeing a real live kabuto was his greatest encounter that day... He was wrong.


**Disclaimer: **I don't own Naruto or Pokémon. If I did, I'd have a lot of money…but I don't. So don't bother suing, you won't get anything out of it.

**Notes:** (Crossover, could be a crack!fic if you want) Here there be Naruto characters and Pokémon monsters! This is a one-shot which occurs _several decades before_ "Shiny Demon".

I hope that you enjoy it!

* * *

**A Wild Tomboy Appeared!**

Minato Namikaze sighed as he settled onto a flat rock to rest his feet. It was a long walk from Saru city to the seaside, but it would be worth it to play on the beach and perhaps catch some ocean pokémon. Deciding that it was a good time for lunch, he pulled some food from his pack and released his monsters.

Hana, his bulbasaur, was his first pokémon. She was a solid fighter that showed a lot of promise. He looked forward to the day when she would fully evolve and bloom into a powerful venusaur.

Gama, a poliwag, was his first captured pokémon. His uncle, Jiraiya, was a big supporter of amphibious pokémon so he had sought out one to please his guardian. He had no regrets, as Gama's water attacks protected Hana against fire, and the tadpole's hypnotizing powers were excellent for catching things.

And then there was Kiroi, his recently evolved pikachu. When he'd first captured Kiroi as a pichu, he'd thought that it was male. However, after a stop at a pokémon center, it had been identified as female by the knowledgeable staff. Now that she had evolved, the heart-shaped end of her lightning bolt tail confirmed her gender.

Parceling out the food to his minions, he settled back on his rock seat and bit into a sandwich. It was a wonderful day to eat outdoors. The sun was warm and shining brightly and there was barely a cloud in the sky.

"Today is a good day," he said to himself.

And then some nearby bushes rustled. Minato paused in his lunch and started at the foliage curiously. Sometimes food would attract especially bold wild pokémon into appearing. Perhaps it would be something interesting that he wanted to catch.

Something brown and smooth, like a river rock, crawled out of the greenery on yellowish, insect-like limbs. It looked like it had a pair of tiny black eyes on the brown dome-like shell, but there also seemed to be large glowing eyes peering out from the shadowy underbelly of the creature. Whatever it was it wasn't immediately familiar, so Minato whipped out his pokédex to see what it was.

"A…_kabuto_?!" he sputtered softly as the strange pokémon continued to creep up to his impromptu picnic without a hint of fear. "But…but those are _extinct_!"

Through the miracle of modern technology, it was possible to reanimate fossils of pokémon that had gone extinct. However, it was prohibitively expensive for most trainers and only very wealthy collectors or talented trainers who had won some kind of sponsorship could afford to have it done. It was rumored that there were a few remote areas where some reanimated fossil pokémon had escaped to and were rebuilding their populations in the wild—or perhaps they'd never gone extinct in those places at all.

But a kabuto…_here_?! By a well-traveled path?! It didn't seem very likely…

The kabuto crept right up to him and started trying to climb up his pant leg, one claw-like limb reaching for his forgotten sandwich sitting on his knee.

"Slasher!" a voice called out. "Where'd you go?! Slash—oh, there you are!"

Minato finally tore his wide eyes away from the kabuto to find a trainer pushing past the bushes that the rare pokémon had crawled out from. The trainer looked to be about his age—eleven, maybe twelve years old—with short red hair. He couldn't quite tell if the other trainer was a boy or a girl. The other kid's short hairstyle, type of dress, lack of jewelry, and overall scruffiness seemed to indicate "boy"; but the slender build and delicate features hinted towards "girl". It left the other trainer rather androgynous in Minato's mind.

"Don't you wander off like that!" the red-haired trainer—whose high voice didn't necessarily mean anything before puberty—scolded the kabuto, plucking it off Minato's leg. "Somebody might steal you!"

The kabuto made a gurgling sound and twitched its stubby limbs.

"Ugh," the red-head sighed and set the living fossil back on the ground before turning to Minato. "Sorry about that, girly."

Minato sputtered in indignation. "Girly?!"

His uncle liked to tease him about his "cute face" all the time. And he was used to old people and those with poor eyesight sometimes mistaking his gender. But did he really look effeminate enough for a trainer his own age to make such a mistake?

"I'm not a girl!" he snapped, closing his pokédex and jamming it back into his pack.

"Well you've got a girl pikachu," the red-head replied, shrugging.

"So what?"

"So I don't know any boy that would be caught dead with a girl pikachu," the stranger explained. "It's the heart-tail—too girly."

"Well I don't care about that," Minato declared and picked his sandwich back up.

The red-head shrugged, then crouched down and held out a hand to Kiroi. The pikachu paused in her lunch and crept over to sniff the offered hand. The mystery trainer gently scratched Kiroi under the chin and the electrical mouse practically purred in delight, leaning into the touch.

"Aw, aren't you so cute!"

Minato frowned, bothered at the other trainer's interference with his pokémon. "I thought that you said no boy would be caught dead with a female pikachu."

The mystery trainer squinted at him for a minute, and then scowled. "I'm a girl you moron!"

_Great…a tomboy._ "How was I supposed to know?" he shot back. "You don't look like a girl."

"Well, pardon me for not having a big glowing sign over my head…or a tail with a heart shape on it," the girl retorted.

"Growing your hair out a bit would help," he muttered. "I've never seen a girl with such short hair."

She glared at him and then whipped out a pokéball and released a totodile. "Crusher, _bite_!"

Minato yelped and flipped over the rock to dodge the snapping jaws of the tiny blue crocodile, nearly dropping his sandwich in the process. "Hana, _sleep powder_!"

His bulbasaur angled her bulb towards the totodile and sprayed a glittering, bluish powder on it, which caused the snapping crocodile to collapse in a snoring heap.

"Hey!" the tomboy growled, recalling the napping crocodilian to its sphere. "What was that for?"

"You told it to bite me!" Minato yelled. "And it's not like I had Hana use poison powder or stun spore. Your totodile will wake up just fine in an hour or so."

She made a face at him, but didn't reply. He turned away from her and determinedly tore into his sandwich. The girl didn't leave, like he hoped that she would; instead, she petted Kiroi and kept her kabuto from stealing other pokémon's food. Once he finished with his lunch, he turned back to the girl.

"Why are you still here?" he demanded.

"I didn't feel like leaving yet," she replied. "Where are you headed?"

"…To the beach."

"Cool!" she exclaimed, her odd blue-green eyes shining. "That's where I was going! We can walk together."

"What?!" Minato choked.

"Let me get my bag, I'll be right back!"

Before he could protest this traveling arrangement, she had vanished. Minato stared after the tomboy for a moment and then began packing things up. While he worked, her kabuto tried to climb on top of Gama, who didn't appreciate the attention and started slapping at the dome-shaped pokémon with his paddle-like tail.

Moments later, the girl was back with a messenger bag slung over her shoulder. She rescued her kabuto from Gama and let it crawl onto her back where it clung there, looking like a backpack. Then she invited Kiroi onto her shoulder…and the pikachu accepted.

_Traitor,_ Minato thought at the betrayal.

"So let's go!" the girl cried. "I want to let Tsunami swim in the ocean!"

"Tsunami?" he asked as called Gama back to its pokéball.

"My magikarp!" the tomboy grinned wildly.

Minato eyed her warily as he started back on the path to the ocean with Hana at his heels. _I've never someone so pleased to have a magikarp before. Sure, it evolves into something great, but…it's still just a magikarp._

They walked in silence for a while. He led the way with his bulbasaur right behind him. She followed a few steps behind with her kabuto clinging to her back and Kiroi on her shoulder. He didn't mind the silence, but it seemed to bother her.

"Say…what's your name, anyway?"

He rolled his eyes. "Minato Namikaze."

"Namikaze, eh? Well, my name's Kushina Uzumaki, and you'd better not forget it!" she declared.

"I won't," he muttered. _I'm sure that I'll be cursed with the memory of you forever and ever…_


End file.
